Posts tagged “Irrational”

Almost ten years after our first trip to Rapture, the BioShock trilogy has been re-released and (in some cases) remastered. The Collection [official site] looks lovely but it's far from perfect. Today, we're looking back though - a lot has happened since the first game’s arrival, including the departure of director Ken Levine from the studio that made two of the three games, and a…

Almost ten years after we first daddied and kindlied and golfed, BioShock has today returned in an apparently fancy-panted remastered version, aka Bioshock: The Collection [official site]. Sadly it’s not in the best of shape, in terms of what we PC folk tend to demand from our settings menus and whatnot, but perhaps a more overriding question is but how does it look? I shall…

And now on Vague, Possibly-Nothing News Hour, it's the apparent leak of something called The BioShock Collection, which appears to comprise BioShock 1, BioShock 2 and BioShock: Infinite Art Budget. Which isn't super-interesting in itself, given we've all been able to pick up said bundle or the components thereof for absurdly low prices in various Steam sales. What is twisting my Plasmids, man, is that…

Ken Levine has moved onto other projects, and Irrational essentially no longer exists, but publishers 2K have declared that the BioShock series will continue nonetheless. Good, I'm glad: the games so far have had downs as well as ups to say the least, but they have, to a one, attempted to do things that other big-budget shooters do not. It'd be a terrible shame if…

Irrational Games as we know it closed in February, though the BioShock studio lives on in a way with a small group of survivors under Ken Levine at a new team within 2K. Once upon a time, though, there were two Irrationals. A Canberra arm of Irrational was founded in 2000, then later renamed 2K Australia. It mostly worked with Irrational and other 2K studios,…

Even a few years ago, the idea of getting to watch assorted Looking Glass and Irrational alumni play and talk through revered sci-fi immersive sim System Shock 2 sounded like an absurd fantasy. Twitch and Twitter, whatever else they might be throwing at the world, have broken down so many barriers. For instance: two of hours of System Shock 2, with live commentary provided by…

OK, normally "human being accepts new job at large company" isn't our sort of news, unless it's a really big name. The creative lead on Star Wars: The Force Unleashed perhaps doesn't make it onto any auteur lists (though he has worked on enough other Star Wars games to fill a few Sandcrawlers), but Haden Blackman fetching up at 2K is fascinating because... well, what's…

With Irrational 20,000 leagues under and Ken Levine off doing his own, significantly smaller thing at 2K, you might think BioShock dead in the water. You would, however, be wrong. Following on from Levine's original comment that he was leaving the series in 2K's hands, Take-Two Big Daddy Strauss Zelnick has confirmed at a recent analyst conference that the oft-divisive series will carry on and once-thought-dead…

BioShock Infinite's DLC, BioShock Infinite and BioShock 1 concludes with this second, longer, stealthier half of last November's return to Rapture. It's out now. You'll hear no politics from me, though by God it's tempting to correlate Burial At Sea Part 2's status as a swansong for two BioShock universes with the recent, shock closure of Irrational. Whatever else there is to both tales, at…

Irrational has (mostly) sunk beneath the gaming industry's ever-turbulent waves, but its spirit lives on. And by that, I mean the rather tumultuous work environment gave birth to one last piece of DLC before massive (and by many accounts, inevitable) layoffs struck. BioShock Infinite: Burial At Sea Episode One was a mixed bag, but Episode Two has a shot at going out on a high…

Please note that while this piece contains no overt plot spoilers for any BioShock game, it does feature some allusions to their major events and does presume at least some familiarity with them. "The problem with utopia is it's still full of people." A fair sentiment indeed, but is it truly spoken by a dispossessed citizen of the fast-failing undersea brains trust that is Rapture,…

Oh look, here's a release date for the first BioShock Infinite story DLC, Burial At Sea. This, you may recall, recasts Infinite's protagonists Booker and Elizabeth in the undersea social experiment that is Rapture, and thus entails both a brand new story beneath the waves and a chance to catch up with old chums such as Big Daddy and his syringe-loving chums. Irrational have been…

Bioshock has that one part, the stunning moment that locks the game in the memory forever. I'm talking, of course, about the opening plane crash and the first view of the lighthouse. The descent into Rapture, like the ascent into Columbia, employed tidy, efficient techniques to build a world that was eerie, allusive and oddly attractive. Alec wrote an entire post about that first sight…

The Modern Day Icarus videos that heralded the arrival of Bioshock Infinite were thoroughly enjoyable as far as marketing nonsense goes. Faux documentaries that showed glimpses of the city in the sky, its populace and artefacts, they were entertainingly odd and managed to win my approval despite showing nary a glimpse of the game itself. As the Burial At Sea DLC approaches - and with…

So, as guessed by people paying attention to Ken Levine last night, there's to be BioShock: Infinite DLC. What a surprise. What's more of a surprise is that one bit is out today. That is Clash In The Clouds, and is a bunch of challenges. Below you've got a trailer for that, and a teaser for something called Burial At Sea, which will be a…

We all have our embarrassing secrets. For instance, Jim has never hopped, too scared to take such a risk with gravity. Adam never realised you were supposed to apologise to ducks. And I've never played System Shock 2. It's not my fault - I was busy. But with my first gap in my schedule since August 1999, I've been having a go at the freshly…

4500 words, and I still feel I didn't get anywhere near close to covering everthing I wanted to about BioShock: Infinite - that I made lengthy generalisations but not enough specification of the smaller, or at least subtler, details and events of a game which consistently barrages the player with imagery and ideas. Here are a few I missed, just to get them off my…

BioShock: Infinite is a new first-person shooter from Irrational, creators of BioShock, System Shock 2 and SWAT 4. It's set on a flying city in 1912, where racism and religious fundamentalism dictate society. You're up there, wielding guns and magic, to bring someone the girl and wipe away the debt. Here's what I thought, spoiler-free.

After years of speculation, I've finally figured out what the 'Infinite' stands for in the new BioShock's title. It's the number of trailers that they're going to release before the game comes out. The closer we'll get, the sheer mass of the trailers they've made will start warping time. We'll slow down the closer we get to the March 26th, and time will stretch on…